Mark Baber
RIP
I'm quite frankly puzzled by why this is such an issue. IMM ships had begun being equipped with wireless equipment as early as 1905 and I don't see anything surprising, let alone sinister, in Californian's being so equipped.
Why did Californian even have wireless?
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Julian Atkins
Member
I don’t understand Mike’s posts 29 and 30 above. I agree with Mark Baber.
Samuel Halpern
Member
Neither do I. I too agree with Mark.
Mike Spooner
Member
I agree with Mark why make such a big issues. They have been sailing ships for years without wireless which clearly demonstrate you do not need a wireless to cross the Oceans. As even in 1912 there were many ships didn't have wireless yet still did the job. As captain Smith was brought up sailing ships without wireless and did a fine job to. I do wander if Titanic didn't have a wireless would of Smith been more cautious of the icefield ahead.
Julian Atkins
Member
Hi Mike,
You are not agreeing with Mark at all, as you then post something that then is the exact opposite of what Mark posted, and returning to your original (shall we politely say) thoughts.
Cheers,
Julian
You are not agreeing with Mark at all, as you then post something that then is the exact opposite of what Mark posted, and returning to your original (shall we politely say) thoughts.
Cheers,
Julian
Mike Spooner
Member
Hi Julian I take your point,
OK let me put it another way I see any new technology assisting the captain job can lead to complacency as is no different today. So as for captain Lord who sailed ships for years without a wireless therefore does not need a wireless for Californian. The ship was never built with a wireless where company Leyland Line under IMM had added as an extra feature and is the second crossing to be used. Lord is quite capable sailing the ship without a wireless. The ship was built to take 47 passengers, so I can only thing it was install for the benefit of paying passengers.
As there were no passengers on board why does Lord need an wireless operator.
OK let me put it another way I see any new technology assisting the captain job can lead to complacency as is no different today. So as for captain Lord who sailed ships for years without a wireless therefore does not need a wireless for Californian. The ship was never built with a wireless where company Leyland Line under IMM had added as an extra feature and is the second crossing to be used. Lord is quite capable sailing the ship without a wireless. The ship was built to take 47 passengers, so I can only thing it was install for the benefit of paying passengers.
As there were no passengers on board why does Lord need an wireless operator.
The idea here is that the wireless on Californian is being used for trafficking smuggled black market/illegal goods. Lord deliberately sailed into the ice so he'd have an excuse to be stopped for a while. Evans then talks in code to the smaller boats who sail up to Californian and take on the goods and give Lord the cash. If you accept this theory, then it makes perfect sense why Lord didn't want to get mixed up in a rescue situation and attract attention to himself and his ship. He might have even thought Titanic could have been a trap, sending up phony distress rockets to lure him over there and then some kind of SWAT team storm aboard Californian and find like 500 lbs of opium or whatever he is really carrying.
I know many will be skeptical, but it is not a crazy theory, and actually makes the most sense when you take a hard, unbiased look at the evidence.
I know many will be skeptical, but it is not a crazy theory, and actually makes the most sense when you take a hard, unbiased look at the evidence.
Samuel Halpern
Member
April 1st. I get it.
Julian Atkins
Member
“General cargo” is what the Boston Press via Reade and Paul Slish said it had on that crossing from London to Boston.
No one has actually looked for the ‘manifest’ in any archives in Boston. Paul Slish said he might do so some years ago. I certainly haven’t, as I have never been to the USA. The London record of the cargo for that voyage doesn’t appear on any searches I have done online of The Public Records Office at Kew.
It was not unusual for The Californian to go from London instead of Liverpool, and London had a regular steaming of a Leyland Line vessel to Boston. Though on this occasion it was the first time The Californian had left London for Boston and with Captain Lord as it’s Captain.
No one has actually looked for the ‘manifest’ in any archives in Boston. Paul Slish said he might do so some years ago. I certainly haven’t, as I have never been to the USA. The London record of the cargo for that voyage doesn’t appear on any searches I have done online of The Public Records Office at Kew.
It was not unusual for The Californian to go from London instead of Liverpool, and London had a regular steaming of a Leyland Line vessel to Boston. Though on this occasion it was the first time The Californian had left London for Boston and with Captain Lord as it’s Captain.
I would bet a lot of hollow items so that contraband could be hidden inside. Like a load of ceramic statutes of King Albert, which you break open like a pinata to get the opium or stolen jewels out. Why else bother sailing that rusty old clunker all the way to the USA when coal was expensive and hard to get. In a time when you could barely scrounge coal enough to get mega-important high rollers on Titanic across, you're going to sail some rusty old boat full of lumber or whatever? Doesn't pass the smell test to me.
Mark Baber
RIP
Californian was barely ten years old. Hardly a "rusty old clunker."
You can bet and do your smell tests but you need evidence to back up all these claims
Stephen Carey
Member
You have to remember also, that not every ship was on the North Atlantic run! Radio opened up the world and both passenger and cargo ships made use of it "East of Suez" especially. Before radio, ships were out of communication for months on end without any messages other than those sent by telex from bunkering ports, passing ships or canal transits.
As an engineer we were often envious of the Sparkie (Radio Officer) - whilst he was the most junior officer on board, there wasn't much in the way of promotion other than on passenger ships and their pay was rather paltry compared to Engine and Deck officers, but their life seemed easy. We considered them good value on a run ashore too, as most of them were "Morse Mad" and therefore quite happy go lucky!
Time for a sea story?
I was engineer cadet on 100,000 tons of ocean-going heartbreak and after our watch (12-4 morning) the 3rd and I were tasked by the 2nd to help out in the bilges rebuilding a large ballast pump. In the bowels of the vessel, gloomy and covered in heavy oil, we struggled with large parts and pretty appalling conditions. The 2nd said "Nip up to the bridge and get a used chart, Stevie" (these were used to make joints for the pump covers) so off I trudged up umpteen steel ladders to the accommodation and up 3 levels where I passed by Sparkie's shack. There he was in his whites, leaning back in his chair, one foot on the desk, a cold drink in front of him and earphones on one ear - reading a book... Nodding to him and getting a nod back I thought I was maybe in the wrong job... Carrying on up another level and out into the wheelhouse - nobody there. The lookout pointed skywards and said "Up there". I climbed the vertical ladder to the Monkey Island to find three monkeys - er Mates - sitting in deckchairs in their shorts - the watchkeeper being the one with his eyes open. I asked for a dead chart and he nodded so down I went to the bridge chart locker and extracted one. Back down I went, nodded to Sparky who hadn't shifted position, down to the engineroom door and into the racket of the Valley of Flying Metal. Down more ladders and climbed down into the bilge. "About time" said the 2nd, starting to knock a joint out of the chart (note that a joint in this case was not smoking material). I mentioned as we were having tea handed down from above (the British MN like anything else from our country cannot function without tea) that we seemed to have the thin end of the wedge when it came to working conditions? "Ah", said the 2nd "- at least we get to work in the shade..."
In those days we only had a 400W transceiver so leaving Japan for Panama resulted in 7000 miles of blissful silence from the office - to be treasured, because as soon as we left radio silence the office was banging out telexes right left and centre asking us stuff we didn't really want to tell them, spares lists, fuel states and all the minutiae of running a deep-sea ship. Sparky was certainly kept on his toes at those times for sure. Then crew reductions got shot of Sparks and the Electrician, whose duties were absorbed by the Deck and Engine officers, themselves suffering shortages (no more cadets or junior engineers to help out). Today it's a constant barrage of emails from the office telling the ship how to tie their shoelaces and to wash their underwear regularly such that time off from your actual job is spent answering them. No wonder it's not the halcyon days it was in the last century! I'm a relic of a more gracious era...
As an engineer we were often envious of the Sparkie (Radio Officer) - whilst he was the most junior officer on board, there wasn't much in the way of promotion other than on passenger ships and their pay was rather paltry compared to Engine and Deck officers, but their life seemed easy. We considered them good value on a run ashore too, as most of them were "Morse Mad" and therefore quite happy go lucky!
Time for a sea story?
I was engineer cadet on 100,000 tons of ocean-going heartbreak and after our watch (12-4 morning) the 3rd and I were tasked by the 2nd to help out in the bilges rebuilding a large ballast pump. In the bowels of the vessel, gloomy and covered in heavy oil, we struggled with large parts and pretty appalling conditions. The 2nd said "Nip up to the bridge and get a used chart, Stevie" (these were used to make joints for the pump covers) so off I trudged up umpteen steel ladders to the accommodation and up 3 levels where I passed by Sparkie's shack. There he was in his whites, leaning back in his chair, one foot on the desk, a cold drink in front of him and earphones on one ear - reading a book... Nodding to him and getting a nod back I thought I was maybe in the wrong job... Carrying on up another level and out into the wheelhouse - nobody there. The lookout pointed skywards and said "Up there". I climbed the vertical ladder to the Monkey Island to find three monkeys - er Mates - sitting in deckchairs in their shorts - the watchkeeper being the one with his eyes open. I asked for a dead chart and he nodded so down I went to the bridge chart locker and extracted one. Back down I went, nodded to Sparky who hadn't shifted position, down to the engineroom door and into the racket of the Valley of Flying Metal. Down more ladders and climbed down into the bilge. "About time" said the 2nd, starting to knock a joint out of the chart (note that a joint in this case was not smoking material). I mentioned as we were having tea handed down from above (the British MN like anything else from our country cannot function without tea) that we seemed to have the thin end of the wedge when it came to working conditions? "Ah", said the 2nd "- at least we get to work in the shade..."
In those days we only had a 400W transceiver so leaving Japan for Panama resulted in 7000 miles of blissful silence from the office - to be treasured, because as soon as we left radio silence the office was banging out telexes right left and centre asking us stuff we didn't really want to tell them, spares lists, fuel states and all the minutiae of running a deep-sea ship. Sparky was certainly kept on his toes at those times for sure. Then crew reductions got shot of Sparks and the Electrician, whose duties were absorbed by the Deck and Engine officers, themselves suffering shortages (no more cadets or junior engineers to help out). Today it's a constant barrage of emails from the office telling the ship how to tie their shoelaces and to wash their underwear regularly such that time off from your actual job is spent answering them. No wonder it's not the halcyon days it was in the last century! I'm a relic of a more gracious era...
Mike Spooner
Member
If ships under the IMM banner have decided to fit wireless unit from 1905 on that is purely a private matter to meat the completion head on. It was not Government regulation or for safety. If was for safety why did it take six years to do so. So why did captain Lord need a wireless when sailing ships for years without a wireless. It was the company policy to have one and not the captain.
Just a matter of interest are there any written rules set by IMM for the purpose of a wireless on board?
Just a matter of interest are there any written rules set by IMM for the purpose of a wireless on board?
First of all, you're reading way too much into this. Second, IMM did not regulate the use of wireless aboard their vessels; it was covered under the Wireless Ship Act which was signed at the 1906 Berlin Convention and did not pass any regulatory laws, until June 1910. It stated "SEC. 1. That from and after the first day of July, nineteen hundred and eleven, it shall be unlawful for any ocean-going steamer of the United States, or of any foreign country, carrying passengers and carrying fifty or more persons, including passengers or crew, to leave or attempt to leave any port of the United States unless such steamer shall be equipped with an efficient apparatus for radio-communication, in good working order, in charge of a person skilled in the use of such apparatus, which apparatus shall be capable of transmitting and receiving messages over a distance of at least one hundred miles, night or day: Provided, That the provisions of this Act shall not apply to steamers plying only between ports less than two hundred miles apart."
23. Early Government Regulation (1903-1941)
Wireless Ship Act of 1910
The Wireless Ship Act of 1910 was the United States' first effort to regulate radio traffic, but the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 revealed shortcomings in the law.
However the Act was not as strict as it should have been. The sinking of the Titanic prompted new radio laws and addressed certain loopholes, which were revealed after the disaster.
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